Seven Empty Houses.
Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell.
One World. 2023. 208 pp.
ISBN 978 0 86154 432 5.
What does a daughter feel when she has to deal with her mother's obsession for, unbidden, tidying the expensive homes of complete strangers, then running off with some favored object?
How does a man cope when his visiting parents are joyfully running around naked in the garden and his ex-wife is terrified that her new man, or their grandchildren, might see them?
What does it feel like to be old, inform, and wanting to die, but all that happens is you make a short list to stave off the increasing memory failures and become obsessed with packing up almost everything in the house?
Schweblin creates characters who draw you into their lives so you feel their dilemmas. If there are resolutions, they are unexpected. Her approach is subtle, too, hinting at psychological disturbances and letting the reader feel their effects, rather than spelling them out.
You know the list-making woman wants to die, and when it seems imminent, is dismayed when it doesn't happen. You know she is aware when strange and worrying things seem to occur, in spite of her list. You know, too, she relies on her equally elderly husband, although she only ever refers to him disparagingly as "he" and "him." He appears on her list:
Classify everything
Donate what is expendable
Wrap what is important
Concentrate on death
If he meddles, ignore him
When he dies, she simply crosses the last item from her list.
Often, there is a feeling of threat in the stories, as in "An Unlucky Man," which begins:
The day I turned eight, my sister—who absolutely always had to be the centre of attention—swallowed an entire cup of bleach. Abi was three.
The narrator describes the ensuing panic and how she ends up sitting alone in a hospital waiting room while her parents and sister are being helped.
Then a man came and sat down next to me. I don't know where he came from; I hadn't noticed him before.
"How's it going?" he asked.
I thought about saying "Very well" which is what Mom always said if someone asked her that, even if she'd just told me and Abi that we were driving her insane.
"Okay," I said.
When the man offers a voucher for a free ice cream cone, she refuses, but eventually agrees to leave the hospital with him. The reader worries about what is happening, and the tension is maintained until the end of the story. The ending is unexpected but still troubling.
There are not seven empty houses in this book, as the title might suggest, but the minds of seven people, none of which are empty and all of which are disturbed in some way. Schweblin is adept at suggesting uncomfortable feelings about filial duty, the worrying behavior of neighbors, and the urge to help, the disorientation felt when moved to unfamiliar places, love and the lack of love, and the ways in which people distract themselves from difficult emotions.
The situations she invents are odd, and the people she puts into them are individuals, each with their own character, thoughts, and behavior. Altogether, this is an unusual, beautifully imagined, and unsettling book, where each one of us might recognize the feelings of its inhabitants, although we may not act them out in quite the same way.
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